This week saw the BBC accused of misleading viewers of their Frozen Planet series. Accusations from the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, and Sun even cried ‘fake’. That wasn’t surprising, however, considering their typical view on the Beeb.

The scene in question features a mother polar bear and her new born cubs in their den, but the footage was filmed in a Dutch zoo, not the Arctic, as some disgruntled fans were expecting. They voiced their upset via Twitter:

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Hate the thought we were duped by Frozen Planet.Don’t like edges of journalism being blurred with tricks.Honesty in reporting is important

Their press office fired out the video (which had been available since early November) of the show’s producer talking about the birth of the polar bears in a Dutch zoo. The BBC said it was “some of the most endearing and revealing footage in the series”, not exactly words you’d imagine to be used on hidden, misleading or faked footage is it? Twitterers said no and saw through the criticism.

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Frozen Planet: BBC denies misleading fans bbc.in/sTWHyQ Well, I was always aware that sequences are done in studios or sanctuaries.

Nae wonder I Dinnae buy papers anymore with some of todays front pages. Shite journalism especially the mirror on trying to shame frozen planet. Maybe send journalist and editor on next trip and see the hard work that is done!

A lot of people felt very strongly about the situation and how the tabloids had tried to write off so much hard work, passion and incredible, never-seen-before footage of the natural world. Robert Hall articulated well what most seemed to be thinking.

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I am loving the fact that the public are seeing beyond the press reports about Frozen Planet being “fake”. It is easy for moronic journalists to sit behind their desk and write about how the BBC tried to “trick” us into believing the shots of the polar bear cubs birth and the freezing of the catapillar were real, but the reality is that filming either of those events in the wild would be damn near impossible. The truth is that they were showing us all how these things happen, and at no point did they say “everything you see in this is real and in the wild”. The purpose of the program was to educate people in what life in the polar regions is like, and I will DEFINITELY be buying the boxset.

But were viewers right to feel let down by the lack of clarity from the show and Attenborough?

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Apparently David Attenborough’s frozen planet, a polar bear giving birth was actually made out to be in the artic but was actually filmed in a zoo……GUTTED! I feel like I’ve just been told father Christmas isn’t real…..! <\3

The Mirror continued to slate the BBCdubbing more footage from the series a ‘sham’. This came after a BBC spokesperson confirmed that scenes featuring the freezing of a woolly caterpillar and the growing of ice and snowflakes were also filmed in controlled environments.

Mirror columnist and TV critic Jim Shelley lambasted the show by saying that Sir David “would be better to recognise that what he and the BBC did was duplicitous”, and ” clearly misleading”, which would leave viewers “disappointed to find out that Sir David is yet another TV presenter they cannot totally trust.”

The public were not biting, and Radio 1 DJ Maryanne Hobbs Tweeted a message in support of the Frozen Planet team.

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Frozen Planet critics – back off – Attenborough and his team are heroic, creating some of the most important & profound programming on earth

Out of all the publicity, both, good and bad, came a lot of support and a huge boom in tourism to the poles. It’s fair to say that penguins and polar bears are now definitely ‘cool’. Travellers are more eager than ever to get out and see amazing things, like those advertised in Frozen Planet.

The issue was continually raised leading up to Christmas with Attenborough in the limelight promoting his most recent film – The Bachelor King 3D. Whilst on Sky News the idea of the show misleading viewers was brought up again. Talking generally about wildlife film making Sir David said “Sometimes you will film one animal, then take another and cut the two together,” continuing, “Sometimes you film one scene this year and another scene next year.”

He really wanted to stress that “making natural history film is an art”, something, which maybe people forget. It’s about portraying a story accurately and if we want to see these processes as they really are, then maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to jump on, and challenge them when we are lucky enough to experience them.

Frozen Planet and its famous pretend Polar Bears spent their Christmas by receiving kudos, and sympathy, featuring in several reviews of the year. The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones closed out the story on Christmas day by summarising “That’s what the BBC gets for raising expectations.”

I’ve created a magazine article, which I think is aesthetically pleasing. I’ve used techniques learnt on previous tasks and have written the article in a way that takes a lot of the best bits from similar articles I researched, combined them and produced a unique and informative piece.

As it turned out, I didn’t end up giving my article a title as such, as I thought it wouldn’t fit the look and feel I was aiming for. It does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s a photographer profile piece on a photographer who has created his own trademark brand of constructed photography.